Only 2 did Tango in Rio for India

Vijay Anand

 

This Rio Olympic, India appeared with the biggest contingent but could achieve fewer medals than London. Sakshi Malik in 58 kg free style wrestling won lone bronze for India. P V Sindhu became the first Indian women to win silver medal in Olympics for India in women’s single badminton. Team returned with just 2 medals.

Hockey hopes crashed at the QF. Under foreign coaches, Indian hockey has gone through total transformation. Our team is scoring more than 75% goals from penalty corner which was below 25% at the beginning of century.  Team India could have done better but journey end too soon. We can take pride that we defeated the champions (Argentina) at group stage. Women team could earn a single point in 5 games to finish at bottom of group.

In athletics, 34 sportsmen/women participated in 19 discipline. Lalita Babar became only the second track runner to qualify for the finals after P T Usha in 1984. After reducing her National record in the SF, he came 10^th in the final. Tintu Luka was unlucky to be drawn in tough heat group. Seema Punia (Discuss throw), Vikas Gowda(Discuss throw), Ranjeet Maheshwari (Triple Jump), Ankit Sharma (Long jump), Seema Antil (Discuss throw), Dutee Chand-Sarbani Nanda (sprint) gave below par performance and went home at the earliest possible stage. 4X400 meters relay men team was disqualified. Thonakal Gopi and Kheta Ram achieved their personal best in marathon.  

Saina Nehwal lost match to much weaker Ukranian opponent due to injury. Srikanth Kidambi played his heart out before going down to 2 time Olympic and 5 time world champion Lin Dan. Doubles pair could not reach the knock out stage. In boxing, India’s best medal hope took a dip when draw was made public. Shiv Thapa, best hope, played his first game against eventual gold medal winner Ramirez of Cuba.  

There were some near misses as well. Deepa Karmakar came 4^th in Women’s Vault. She is young and we’ll surely see better from her. Abhinav Bindra missed medal in tie breaker of 10 met air rifle event. Sania- Bopanna lost in the bronze medal match. Vikas bowed out in QF of men’s middle weight boxing.  Kolkata’s Atanu Das came 5^th in men’s individual archery.  Jitu Rai, another hope, could reach only one final out of 2 and finished 8^th in 10m air pistol. Dattu Bhokanal came out 13 in men’s single skull and created history by qualifying for the final. Satish Shivalingam came 11^th in 77kg weightlifting. No male wrestler (including heavy favourite Yogeshwar Dutt) was able to cross round of 16 in either category which is a point of worry. 

Deepika Kumari and whole archery team, Avtar Singh (Men’s 90 kg Judo), Gagan Narang (3 shooting events), Heena Sidhu- Gurpreet Singh-Chain Singh (2 shooting events each) disappointed everyone.  All table tennis players bowed out in round 1.

It was a game which heralded new chapter for India in women empowerment. Players got maximum ink, beam and most importantly the eyeballs. There are a lot of lessons to be learnt. It should be seen that medal tally of 15-30-19-64 of Commonwealth games ‘14 and 11-10-36 -57 of Asian Games ’14 could fetch us only 2 medals. Though there is significant drop in medal count of all the powers but in case of India, it is appalling. A lot of work is to be done. Infrastructure, stadiums, picking and nurturing players from young age, tough competition in the country by meets-leagues-tournaments etc, tough anti doping rules, good coaches, cleaning of sport federations, facilities are some of the many areas where we have to work really hard if we want a better tally at Tokyo.  Sadly, blessings from famous tall statue of Jesus fell on only 2 Indians. Tchau Rio.